Port Weller
Welland Ship Canal Section 1, showing Port Weller Harbour and Lock No. 1, 1914.
Once the sites in Port Dalhousie had been examined, the party travelled eastward on Lake Shore Road to Port Weller. Here, at the mouth of Ten Mile Creek, a new entrance to the Welland Ship Canal was being constructed. The programme notes several points of interest along this stretch of the Welland Ship Canal, known as Section 1. This section included the Welland Ship Canal construction railway, "a double-track railway which will parallel the canal on its west side for about seven miles from the Lake to Merritton. It is to be used by the different contractors for the purpose of transporting their excavated material to the Lake where it will be utilized to form dykes on either side of the harbour".
Steam shovels were used here to excavate, and the debris used to make up railway embankments and build out the dykes on either side of the harbour. A drag-line excavating machine was also used in this section to excavate a deep pit that would form the end of a trench which would eventually extend 1500 feet to the lower end of Lock No. 1. It is noted that "this style of excavating machine has only been in use for a few years but its merits are being better realized every day and it is now coming into general use".
The process of excavating the harbour is also described. The programme states that "if the Lake is not too rough there will be seen at work three large powerful dipper dredges which are excavating the very hard material in the bottom of the new harbour. The material is excavated into scows which are towed to the site of one or other of the dykes which are to form the sides of the harbour and there dumped, by allowing doors in the bottom of the scows to open".
Port Weller Harbour, 1915